


The Other Newton's Laws

by Ghostinthehouse



Series: Touch Me Not [7]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Gen, Humor, Newton is an accidental BAMF
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-17
Updated: 2019-12-20
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:20:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21836593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ghostinthehouse/pseuds/Ghostinthehouse
Summary: Newton's Third Law: For every action, there is a reaction.Except this is the other Newton. Newton Pulsifer. And the "action" is pressing the Off button while Hell is trying to talk to Crowley through his El-Eck-Tronics...(Now with bonus Heaven)
Series: Touch Me Not [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1544365
Comments: 61
Kudos: 583





	1. All Gone to...

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PeniG](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PeniG/gifts).



Dagon glared out of Crowley's large screen tv. The traitor demon wasn't visible, only a young human male, brown haired, brown eyed, boring. "Where's Crawly? He owes me paperwork."

The human just stared, wearing a puzzled look. "Nobody of that name here," he said. "You're interrupting my program, go away." He fumbled for a flat black stick, pointed it at her, and tentatively jabbed a button.

Dagon was about to sneer that human technology wouldn't stop her demonic link when the screen in front of her made a soft _phut_ and went black. The light in her office, always stuttering and flickering, also went out. "What the...?"

(In the flat up on Earth, Newton was pleased to note that nothing seemed to have gone wrong, no power cuts, and no sparks from either tv or remote. Perhaps he was getting a handle on technology finally.)

Dagon snapped her fingers at the light to fix it. A small shower of sparks fizzled at the ends of the fluorescent tube and then died. The light stayed off. Ugh. Time to drag the maintenance demons over here and get a new tube. She called up a flicker of Hellfire to light her way instead, stalked over to the door and yanked it open - only to see that all the corridor lights were off too. Yells and bumps echoed through the corridors, mingling with the ever-present background screams (this was Hell, after all), as the lesser demons tried to find their way through the sudden darkness.

Apart from the voices, everywhere seemed suddenly, eerily quiet. No buzz from the lighting. No hum from the masses of old computers in every office processing the eternal paperwork. No ringing of phones.

Dagon's eyes went wide, and the fish-scales on her face began to glow with their own fluorescence from the rising fury and suppressed fear pulsing through her. _You're probably thinking, if he can do this, what else can he do? And very very soon you're going to get the chance to find out..._ Crowley had always been tuned in to the hellish aspects of technology. Hadn't he boasted of bringing down all the mobile phone networks in London when he was called in to deliver the Antichrist? What kind of curse had he dropped on them now? Yes, he'd said to stay away, and yes, she had contacted him, but what did he expect? She was Lord of the Files, and bless it all to heaven, if he wanted it to be official, he had to fill in the forms for retirement, right?

She retreated back into her office, and prodded cautiously at her computer. A thin coil of smoke wisped up from it and hung out on the ceiling with the sparks from the tube. The computer didn't otherwise respond. She glared at the machine that held her rapidly-being-computerised filing system. It shuddered as it tried to work and coughed up a matching set of sparks to the tube overhead instead.

A chill ran up Dagon's fish-scaled spine as she recalled one set of paperwork filed relatively recently. It had documented the Wrath and Despair caused by computer systems that crashed and hadn't been backed up, causing tremendous amounts of work to have to be done all over again. _A new variant of Sisyphus_ , it had been titled, and the author had been Crowley.

Dagon's phone rang and rang again, and as she took the calls from all the demons who sent paperwork from each of the other departments to hers, she discovered that not only had every fluorescent tube in Hell simultaneously broken, but so had every computer.

 _Anthony J. Crowley_ , she thought, with a growing snarl of respect for the sheer scale of the curse he had managed to inflict on his former colleagues and workplace. _You knew what to do, and you did it with STYLE!_


	2. Angels, unawares

"Excuse me, ma'am. You've dropped your phone."

Michael swivelled round as the man's voice came from behind her. Sure enough, that was her phone on the ground, having slipped out of the pocket that never seemed to be as big as Gabriel's pockets for some reason. She had been on her way back to the main entrance after a brief excursion for new hairties, but now she had a human to deal with.

She looked him over as she held out her hand for him to return it. He was brown haired, brown eyed, and his love for technology and for his partner was bright and clear to an angel's view. She dropped a perfunctory blessing to enhance his natural talent with computers and said, "Bless you."

He gingerly picked it up and handed it over, a look of relief flickering briefly on his face when nothing apparently happened. "You're welcome. Nice day today."

(Up in heaven, the near-silent air-conditioning went very quietly _phut_.)

"Yes," Michael agreed and hurried off.

The first sign of something wrong was that the escalator up was frozen in place and she had to climb it like stairs. Really, did Earth corrupt everything past maintenance?

Heaven was not in chaos. Of course. Heaven was never in chaos, had not been in chaos since the War ended. Heaven was ordered. And steady. And correct. It was merely - busy - today. Lit by sunlight, rather more golden than was the norm, but perhaps Gabriel had decided to occupy the Host by redecorating once again?

Michael stalked briskly through the - the bustle - until she reached her office and could close the door. Her hands itched to drill with her sword, to take refuge in the familiar weight and touch and movement and rhythm, but she set the desire aside. It wasn't the correct time for that. She tapped the power button on her computer instead and sat down to deal with the ever-increasing reports that filled her office time.

The screen brightened obediently, the white wheel turning and turning in the centre. And turning. And turning. And turning. And tur- Michael snapped her fingers to hurry it up. Instead of loading as it should, the wheel simply turned faster, leaving the computer itself as frozen as the escalator. The room also seemed rather warmer than usual, and she frowned and picked up her phone to call a maintenance angel. Except her phone was even more frozen than her computer and wouldn't respond no matter what button she pressed. "What the..."

Something was very wrong. And that in itself was a wrongness that shouldn't exist. Heaven was perfection. Heaven was never _wrong_. It had to be a demonic curse, some weapon that Hell was trying out in this not-exactly-war, not-exactly-Armageddon strangeness. Very well, she would investigate it. It was her job to defend Heaven against all threats, was it not?

She left her office, striding through warm golden sunlight that reminded her of the nice day down on Earth, and looking for someone with a working phone or computer. From the words around her, that seemed to be absolutely no one. Every phone and computer had gone down simultaneously, as had the official lights and the air conditioning. (That accounted for the odd colour and warmth at least.)

When she finally found someone who knew how to fix them, the angel pulled a long face and dismissed her theory of a threat.

"Oh," xe said. "It can't possibly be demonic, it came in with a trail of angelic blessing."

Michael's mind went instantly to the only angel not under Heaven's control, and the earthly computer he had (which his more mundane reports had often been sent from). _What side did you choose, Aziraphale? What side could you possibly have chosen that would do this to us?_


End file.
